taxonomy of sports fights

[Victor Steinbok]

As a rule, sports writers should avoid talking about language. But
sometimes it works out OK--humor is a required ingredient. Steve Rushin,
of Sports Illustrated, decided to offer a hierarchical taxonomy of
sports fights. It's a decent piece of journalism, but I'll let everyone
else decide on his content delivery.

I am only going to deliver one graf--the rest you have to look up on the
page. The reason for this excerpt is that it includes two pieces that
have had an occasion to fascinate members of this list--the Australian
shortening of words and adding an -o, which I just revived yesterday
after a two years slumber, and the original snowclone.

http://goo.gl/NnRYn

> In fights overseas, incidentally, the phrase "a bit" is meant as an
> intensifier, so that "a bit of aggro" -- in, say, Australian rules
> football -- will be worse than unadorned aggro. Aggro, in this case,
> refers to aggressive or violent behavior, covering the entire spectrum
> of sports fighting. A bit of aggro is, in my limited understanding,
> not as bad in Australia as a bit of "biffo," but then Australia has as
> many words for fighting as the Inuit have for puncturing the myth that
> they have a lot of words for snow.

     VS-)

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